“What’s up?” he inquired, with a jerk of the thumb in the direction of Mr. Vickers’s vanished family.

“Up?” repeated Mr. Vickers, with an air of languid surprise.

“Somebody died and left you a fortin?” inquired the other.

“Not as I knows of,” replied Mr. Vickers, staring.  “Why?”

“Why?” exclaimed the other.  “Why, new clothes all over.  I never see such a turn-out.”

Mr. Vickers regarded him with an air of lofty disdain.  “Kids must ’ave new clothes sometimes, I s’pose?” he said, slowly.  “You wouldn’t ’ave’em going about of a Sunday in a ragged shirt and a pair of trowsis, would you?”

The shaft passed harmlessly.  “Why not?” said the other.  “They gin’rally do.”

Mr. Vickers’s denial died away on his lips.  In twos and threes his neighbours had drawn gradually near and now stood by listening expectantly.  The idea of a fortune was common to all of them, and they were anxious for particulars.

[Illustration:  “They were anxious for particulars.”]

“Some people have all the luck,” said a stout matron.  “I’ve ’ad thirteen and buried seven, and never ’ad so much as a chiney tea-pot left me.  One thing is, I never could make up to people for the sake of what I could get out of them.  I couldn’t not if I tried.  I must speak my mind free and independent.”

“Ah! that’s how you get yourself disliked,” said another lady, shaking her head sympathetically.

“Disliked?” said the stout matron, turning on her fiercely.  “What d’ye mean?  You don’t know what you’re talking about.  Who’s getting themselves disliked?”

“A lot o’ good a chiney tea-pot would be to you,” said the other, with a ready change of front, “or any other kind o’ tea-pot.”

Surprise and indignation deprived the stout matron of utterance.

“Or a milk-jug either,” pursued her opponent, following up her advantage.  “Or a coffee-pot, or—­”

The stout matron advanced upon her, and her mien was so terrible that the other, retreating to her house, slammed the door behind her and continued the discussion from a first-floor window.  Mint Street, with the conviction that Mr. Vickers’s tidings could wait, swarmed across the road to listen.

Mr. Vickers himself listened for a little while to such fragments as came his way, and then, going indoors, sat down amid the remains of his breakfast to endeavour to solve the mystery of the new clothes.

He took a short clay pipe from his pocket, and, igniting a little piece of tobacco which remained in the bowl, endeavoured to form an estimate of the cost of each person’s wardrobe.  The sum soon becoming too large to work in his head, he had recourse to pencil and paper, and after five minutes’ hard labour sat gazing at a total which made his brain reel.  The fact that immediately afterwards he was unable to find even a few grains of tobacco at the bottom of his box furnished a contrast which almost made him maudlin.